Performance comparison between UWB-IR and MB-OFDM with transmit diversity in implant communications

An ultra wideband (UWB) technology is a potential candidate for implant body area networks (BANs), where wireless communications are established between inside and outside of a human body. The UWB can accomplish higher data rate than the other frequency band for the implant communication. However, due to its high frequencies, the UWB signals suffer from quite large attenuation in the implant communication link, which makes it difficult to achieve reliable communications. For achieving reliable communication, it is well known that a spatial diversity technique is efficient without any frequency extension. In our previous works, we developed a transmit polarization diversity antenna for the UWB implant communication. However, optimal UWB modulation scheme for transmit diversity were rarely discussed. In this paper, in order to investigate the optimal UWB modulation schemes for implant communication with transmit diversity, we compare the communication performances of UWB-impulse radio (UWB-IR) and multiband-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM). For this purpose, we first analyze the propagation characteristics in the implant UWB channel, which ranges from 3.4 GHz to 4.8 GHz, using a finite difference time domain (FDTD) numerical analysis technique. Then, we evaluate and discuss the communication performances of both modulation schemes for the transmit polarization diversity from the viewpoint of the BER and the required transmit power.